Prince Ling Soo
In Biggles Gets His Men, Prince Ling Soo was the name of the Manchurian warlord who ran a secret scientific research base in Manchuria where abducted British scientists were forced to work developing secret weapons. The identity of Prince Ling Soo was not known to Biggles or the British authorities where he and his Air Police crew were first despatched on their rescue mission. Captain Roderick Mayne, an expert on China who had travelled in the region had told Biggles that nobody was really sure who ran that part of the country. Remote areas of China were often run by local warlords who often styled themselves mandarins, princes or generals but who were in reality simply brigands who terrorized the local population and used them for their own ends. It was only later when Biggles met Colonel Alexis Petroffsky that he heard the name Ling Soo. Petroffsky was a Russian royalist cossack who had escaped from political prison and who sought refuge in self-imposed exile in that part of Manchuria. He told Biggles that the area was dominated by Prince Ling Soo, but like Mayne, he doubted his royal lineage. He said that Ling Soo was nothing more than a Manchurian bandit, a deserter from the army who had grown rich by robbery and murder and who controlled the area through a reign of terror. He had virtually depopulated the region by enslaving the local population to work in his research base by using a force of armed Mongolian guards led by the chief guard Ming. Biggles thought that Ling Soo was only a puppet. While he might be ambitious and had power locally, he would not have the reach or the boldness to kidnap British and Canadian scientists. There had to be a European power behind him. Petroffsky had also told him that somebody was supplying Ling Soo with weapons. Who or what this power was would not be revealed in the book. Von Stalhein would later tell Biggles that even he did not know who this power was. Von Stalhein did know, however, that it was not a national government from behind the Iron Curtain. He had told Ling Soo earlier on with some annoyance that he had been misled on this point when he was recruited for the project. Considering the number of Russian names among the executives in the camp such as Lieutenant Vasilloff and Grosnow, it would, nonetheless, be a fair assumption that the European backer of the Prince was some powerful Russian individual or organisation. Prince Ling Soo appeared twice in the book. First, Biggles saw him at a conference with von Stalhein and the other executives. Later, towards the end of the book, Ling Soo and the remaining camp executives were gathered in the headquarters again, this time interrogating Biggles, who had been captured. There is little in the way of a physical description of Ling Soo. To Bertie, who was spying on the scene with Petroffsky, Ling Soo was a caricatured character, wearing a "comic opera style of Oriental dress", chattering "like an enraged ape" accompanied by an "eloquent waving of a formidable dagger". It was obvious that he was advocating Biggles' execution. Ling Soo did not, however, get a chance to say much more. Petroffsky, who hated Ling Soo for what he had done to the area, promptly shot him through the window and killed him. Category:People Category:Biggles characters Category:Air Police era characters